A Traceable History

I've been writing this blog for about a year and a half. I've posted 158 (now 159) times. I've majorly overhauled my blogging style and my life in there as well. But one theme always remains the same through the many words and changes:

I'm a midwest misplant.

I don't fully know where I belong. I desperately want to be spending my summer at Jazz in June, at the lake, camping, and at house parties with my friends. But I also love my quiet evenings, my days in both offices, and the productivity New York and its inhabitants seem to inspire in me.

I recently went back and read all 158 posts I've ever made. It seems that every time I travel between New York and Nebraska I have to ponder this topic. But I'm not traveling this summer, and yet I'm pondering.

Slowly but surely, New York is becoming my home. While I certainly miss the summer traditions and definitely miss seeing my family, spending my summer in New York is finally allowing me to "find myself" (to use a term for which I lack love). I spend a lot of time alone. I have to make myself work on projects. Hell, I had to come up with my own summer projects in order to fill all of my free time with something other than Netflix. But despite my loneliness, I feel better than ever, most days. I'm reading, I'm learning to code, I'm learning what matters to me in a significant other, and I'm learning to listen to my body when my mind is racing too quickly to comprehend.

Nebraska will always have a very special place in my heart. It is, after all, the state in which I spent my happiest childhood years. But the Madysen I am now... well, she belongs in New York.

I'm incredibly happy about that, and the reason that I'm happy is not because it fulfills some lifelong goal of "being a New Yorker." Rather, I'm happy because I have a place to call home. I can map out relationships in this city, give you a walking tour of any phase of my life-- post August 2012 of course. There's a visible and tangible history of me here. And it's not some distant history that I know from the stories I was told. But it's a real history, dynamic, at the forefront of my mind, and always changing.

I'm not even close to being a New Yorker and I'll always pronounce my Nebraskan roots proudly. But I love having a history here.

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Meet The Author

I'm Madysen, born and raised in Nebraska but now living out my dreams in New York City. I moved here to go to Columbia, but living in New York has become so much more to me. This blog is a space where I can share my experiences of reconciling my midwestern upbringing with the life I live in the city. But even bigger than that, this blog serves as a space where I can try to understand where I fit into the larger social world, where I want to go in life, and how I want to go about pursuing all of these endeavors.